Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Seen Him!

It wasn't a rat, it was a mouse. And it was sitting on the carpet in Sam's bedroom bold as brass, then it ran behind the toy boxes when it saw me. That's great for two reasons. First, I'd much sooner have mice in the house than rats. And second, we now know where to put the trap - behind the toy boxes in Sam's room.

Sorry Andrew, I take your humane arguments on board but it's in my actual house, it's a fire hazard, a vector for disease, and I don't feel any qualms about getting rid of it in the most effective and efficient way I know how. In fact it was my husband Ed, a strict vegetarian, who bought the traps and set them. Maybe now I can persuade him we should get a cat.

14 comments:

We had a similar experience - I was making breakfast when I heard my wife shriek (in that clichéd way people do in cartoons!) to see a mouse stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room.

I then spent the next 30 minutes poking things under the dresser he hid under, eventually managing to flush him out, and corner him. Whilst he was frantically trying to squeeze under another bit of furniture I grabbed him by the tail .

He now seems to be living happily in the compost heap at the top of our garden (along with a family of frogs) and doesn't seem to have made a repeat visit

Humane mousetraps are a good idea provided you only have one mouse. Sadly, mice usually find their own way into the house, and seldom come alone; if you have a cat, often they bring them into the house and lose them - or lose interest. But then trapping is unnecessary, as sooner or later mousie gets caught again.

It's all a matter of scale. A single mouse under the dresser can be humanely caught and removed whereas a family of 'em has to be snap-trapped or similar; in the same way aphids on a single plant can be removed by hand, but a whole bedful has to be sprayed with soap or somesuch. Oops,I feel a post coming on...

There were mice here when we first came, and so we got a cat, and we don't have mice in the house any more, although I often see them in the garden. Occasionally the cat brings one in as a present, but they're generally dead.

Occasionally we the rats get in toa flat roof we have - Lucius once saw one climb up an ordinary brick wall! They're too much for my cats to deal with (even though they hunt a great number of rabbits, bless 'em), and so we use poison.

I'm absolutely with you, Melanie, they are vermin, and they carry disease. Dealing with them is not incompatible with leading an eco-friendly life: people seem to forget that nature is not sentimental - red in tooth and claw

A cat is always a handy thing to have about IME.. I can't imagine life now without at least a couple of feline friends about.. mind you, if it's bold enough to pop out and have its photo taken and you're sure it's a solo mouse you can probably catch it by hand..

Sam doesn't know, nor do any of the kids. We thought it best. Maybe we'll show them when we catch it, it could be educational. But I didn't want to cause unnecessary panic (and refusal to sleep in the bedroom).

The mouse in the photo isn't our mouse. It's a stock image I found on the internet. If it had stood still for that long I wouldn't have reached for my camera, I'd have reached for a shoe!

oh well, if you're prepared to go down in the annals of history as Mel the Manchester Mouse Murderer!!!!! (actually I know you live just outside Manchester, but I didn't think that the Poynton Pest Persecutor was quite as snappy!!)